Post by miletus12 on Dec 15, 2021 22:35:06 GMT
The Germans were not first with the idea. This was the brain aneurism of two Americans.
A dispatch from Washington announces that the government has ordered one eight-inch Haskell multicharge dynamite gun, to be paid for upon delivery of the finished gun at the Sandy Hook proving ground. "The Multicharge Gun Company" is composed of Thos. C. Platt, A. B. Cornell, John F. Smythe, Arthur B. Johnson, Jas. R. Haskell, Levi P. Morton and Charles P. Young. The company was organized Feb. 17, 1882. In 1883, the company persuaded the war department, under President Arthurs' administration, to try one of the guns. The result of the first test according to the report of Capt. Rogers Birnie, Jr., ordinance department U. S. A., was as follows: "The firing was then continued with varying charges of powder and projectiles, up to the thirty-third round, when the tube was cracked over a length of nine feet from the muzzle to a point near the foremost pocket." The gun was then strengthened and a second test brought forth the following report from Capt. Birnie: "The gun was then strengthened by shrinking several steel bands over the chase—the only part where the form of the gun admitted the employment of this strengthening process. The proof was then continued up to the fifty-third round, when the cast iron body was cracked and the piece permanently disabled." The official report in full of the last appearance of the Platt multicharge gun, when loaded for other than political purposes, is to be found in the report of the secretary of war for 1885, vol. 3, pp. 145-152, with plate.
It is a significant fact that no attempt was made by the company to sell a gun to the government or to have it tested during President Cleveland's administration. The company seems to have remained quiet during an honest administration of affairs, and has become active and aggressive only when a republican administration comes into power. It is a little singular that the war department should conclude to purchase and pay for a gun on delivery that has been proved to be worthless on every occasion when it has been tested. A business man would have required a severe test of the ordinance before purchase and payment and if this administration was to be conducted on business principles such a course would have been adopted in the present case. The secretary of war has $500,000 to spend for guns this year if he chooses to do so, but this is no reason why he should spend the people's money in purchasing worthless guns simply because by so doing he will put money in the pockets of his political friends.
It is a significant fact that no attempt was made by the company to sell a gun to the government or to have it tested during President Cleveland's administration. The company seems to have remained quiet during an honest administration of affairs, and has become active and aggressive only when a republican administration comes into power. It is a little singular that the war department should conclude to purchase and pay for a gun on delivery that has been proved to be worthless on every occasion when it has been tested. A business man would have required a severe test of the ordinance before purchase and payment and if this administration was to be conducted on business principles such a course would have been adopted in the present case. The secretary of war has $500,000 to spend for guns this year if he chooses to do so, but this is no reason why he should spend the people's money in purchasing worthless guns simply because by so doing he will put money in the pockets of his political friends.
Those who do not learn from history will be killed by it.
